


Brush Me Again

by celeste9



Category: In Secret (2013)
Genre: Artists, Character Study, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Infidelity, Introspection, Teasing, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8982271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Laurent wishes he had been asked to paint Thérèse rather than Camille.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musamihi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/gifts).



> Your letter made me think of the film in a way I hadn't before, so I really hope you enjoy what I came up with. :) Happy Yuletide, and thank you for giving me an excuse to write fic for this movie!

Laurent wishes he had been asked to paint Thérèse rather than Camille. 

She has a face that was meant to be immortalized on canvas. The curve of her cheek, the red of her lips, the fall of her dark hair against pale skin. He watches her in unguarded moments, when her cheeks are flushed, her lips parted; he watches her when she looks demurely down at the table as her aunt speaks to her, as though she has not moaned into Laurent’s mouth with his fingers inside her not two hours before. He watches her when she lies next to him, her chest rising and falling with her breath, or when she smiles and laughs as she does for none but him.

Laurent would paint her in bright colors, in hues that match the life within her, the life he flatters himself to have woken from near death. He would have her tilt her head just so, to bare the long, graceful line of her neck, and he would brush her loose hair back, fingers lingering on her skin, feeling her shiver with want, with desire, with anticipation.

When the light hits her, it makes her skin seem to glow, suffused with warmth. Laurent would enjoy the challenge of attempting to capture that with his brush, to match the natural beauty that she possesses rather than painting a pale imitation.

He cannot often take his time but he likes to linger when possible, baring Thérèse’s skin, slowly kissing each inch that is revealed to him. He loves the arch of her neck as she gasps, the way her fingers scrabble for purchase over his back when he presses into her, the way she clings to him, or digs her nails into his skin, or pulls roughly at his hair. He loves to watch and to feel the quivering of her muscles as he brings her pleasure, each writhing motion of her body a work of art in itself.

She is a wild, beautiful creature, filled with desires, and it was a crime for her to be locked away in gloom, dulled by her surroundings and her thankless life, starved for pleasure.

They lie together on the floor and Laurent traces his fingertips over the bumps of her spine. He draws patterns on her skin with his fingers as though her back is his canvas and his hand the brush.

“What are you doing?” Thérèse asks, laughter in her tone. “That tickles.”

“I am turning you into my masterpiece.”

“Am I not pretty enough for you the way I am?”

She is teasing, so Laurent teases back. “I’m afraid your beauty can’t be improved upon but I like to try.”

“You’ve painted many beautiful girls, I’m sure.”

Thérèse says ‘paint’, but she means something else, Laurent knows. She knows he has had many women before her, and she knows he probably has women besides her. She is not jealous, exactly, nor insecure, but she is still asking for his reassurance.

“None that speak to my soul as you do,” he tells her, and she smiles, only half-believing him, but she is clearly appeased anyway.

She only half-believes him because she is not stupid. It’s half a lie, but that makes it half a truth, too. 

Laurent does not love Thérèse, but he is fascinated by her. He is captivated by her beauty but it is true, he has had many beautiful girls. It’s more than that. He has led many women on, seduced them and let them think they meant more than they did, but he enjoys the way Thérèse looks at him more than he can remember ever appreciating such a thing in the past. He has opened her to a world that existed only in her dreams and she looks at him as though he has saved her.

It is an intoxicating thing, to feel as though one possesses that much power.

But he knows he does not control her. No one does, not even her husband, nor her over-bearing aunt. Thérèse is slowly realizing that herself.

That is intoxicating, too, to watch her realize her own worth, that she does not need to be subservient in all things, that she can take what she wants. Laurent sometimes thinks that he himself matters less than the simple fact that he is _there,_ that Thérèse has claimed him as what she wants and will have. 

He was simply the first man to show her the interest she deserved.

“You are a flatterer,” Thérèse says, and she turns to look at him, settling on her back with her head tilted towards him.

Laurent moves, runs his hands up her thighs and straddles her. He rocks slowly against her and she draws her lip between her teeth.

He kisses the tip of her nose. “Shall I flatter you again?” he asks, and Thérèse’s smile is wicked.

It was a true crime, Laurent knows, that her family tried to extinguish her fire.

-

Laurent thinks he might enjoy the furtive nature of their affair more than he should.

There is nothing wrong with Camille, exactly, Laurent thinks, besides that he does not value his wife as well as he should. He is a good enough sort of man, kind, dutiful. Laurent supposes they are friends.

But Laurent cannot help but love taking something that is not his.

He wonders if Thérèse would have held his interest as long if she were an unmarried woman. If she were someone Laurent could truly have, someone he could wed and have in their own marriage bed, he is not sure he would have carried on the affair so long. He enjoys the danger, the thrill, the risk. He enjoys rushing to Thérèse’s door and sneaking inside when no one can see, making her moan while her aunt is downstairs and knowing that if they were caught it would be worse than a scandal.

He enjoys feeling as though he is stealing Thérèse, and that she allows him to do so.

There is a moment when Laurent is buried between Thérèse’s thighs with her aunt in the room, none the wiser, and he loves it. His heart races, Thérèse’s skirts a suffocating heat surrounding him, and when they are alone again he laughs and laughs because the game is half the fun. Thérèse smacks his cheek lightly and murmurs, _go, get out of here, go, you must,_ but she is grinning, and he thinks she loves it as much as he does.

She would not do it otherwise.

Sometimes he looks across the table when they play cards and runs his tongue over his lip when Thérèse catches his eyes, reveling in the flush she tries to hide, the minute quickening of her breath. He caresses his fingers over the inside of her wrist and whispers the things he would like to do to her while her husband is in the next room, unsuspecting. 

Because Camille never suspects anything. He thinks that his wife loves him and that Laurent is his dear friend, never dreaming that while he is away, Laurent is fucking Thérèse until she sobs into his shoulder. 

If Laurent were a bit more reckless than he is, he thinks he would paint Thérèse like that. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her skirts rucked up to her thighs, her hair falling out of its pins. He would paint her in the exact moment of her ecstasy, her lips parting, and in the moment after, when her body trembles and she glides through the aftershocks of bliss. 

Laurent longs to capture that passion, the beauty of it, but knows he must content himself with the witnessing of it. It is something, at least, he thinks, to be the only man to have ever seen it.

He sketches her, from time to time, not always intentionally. He will sit with his sketchpad and draw, only to realize that he has drawn the curve of her shoulder where it meets her neck, or the form of her head on a pillow, her slender hand as she leans by the window, her narrow waist between hands that he recognizes as his own.

He tears them up.

In a tavern he has an ale, a whore in his lap. She is friendly and loud and wriggles appealingly; her soft breasts are pushed against him and he keeps his arm around her. Her breath is sour but she is good enough, Laurent supposes. 

He fucks her in the dirty alley behind the tavern and she is just as loud there as she was inside, moaning into Laurent’s ear like he’s the best fuck she’s ever had. Laurent finds himself missing Thérèse’s soft cries, the way she bites his skin to stay quiet. He misses the way she clenches around him, the way she drags her hands through his hair, her familiar smell and the way her wetness tastes on his fingers when he licks them clean.

He pays the whore and leaves, walking through backstreets to go home, through the dingiest parts of Paris. Thérèse would stand out here, her clean, fair skin, her nice dresses. She would stand out anyway, even in the upper echelons of Paris society, Laurent thinks. Not because she didn’t belong but because her natural charm and grace would outshine the wealthiest ladies in their finery.

He doesn’t know why he thinks that. It is stupidly sentimental.

Laurent has other whores, and he fucks a woman who sits for him. He fucks the sister of a man in the office, young and pretty and enamored of the idea of being with an _artist._ He compares them all to Thérèse. None match her fire. None have her look. Not a one looks at him like she does.

When Thérèse comes running to his door in the dark of night, Laurent knows something is wrong. She has been here only once; she is too easily missed and her presence in this part of Paris too difficult to explain away. She would not come without reason, and certainly not unannounced. 

Laurent has never killed a man to be with a woman before.

He supposes that won’t be true for much longer. 

**_End_ **


End file.
